For three years straight, British race driver Jamie Chadwick was an undisputed champion. She won the inaugural W Series season in 2019, then came back to defend her title in ’21 and ’22. (There was no season in ’20 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.) In the new, women-only racing series, Chadwick held just about every record imaginable: She secured the most wins, podium finishes, pole positions and points. But in June, what was heralded as the first international women’s racing series in motorsport history officially went into administration (the U.K. equivalent of declaring bankruptcy). And with it went Chadwick’s shot to reestablish her dominance in ’24 with a fourth title.
But the 25-year-old’s driving career did not stop there—just as it did not begin with the W Series, either. Chadwick has been one of Williams Racing’s developmental drivers for four consecutive years. In 2015, she became the first woman to win a British GT Championship and was subsequently selected to be part of the Aston Martin Racing’s Driver Evolution Academy. Four years later, she drove in a class-winning team at the Nürburgring 24 Hours race in Germany. And now, for ’23, Chadwick has taken her talents Stateside to compete with the Andretti Autosport team in Indy NXT, a feeder series officially sanctioned by IndyCar. It presents a challenge with a longer, more aggressive style of racing, but it’s one that Chadwick has embraced wholeheartedly. She is the first woman to race full time as a part of the series’ mixed field in 13 years, and the only one out of 25 Indy NXT drivers this season. Financially backed by DHL, Chadwick’s move to the United States–based series is a chance, as many see it, to prove herself once again on an even bigger stage, against a larger field of drivers.
Not only is Chadwick competing on an entirely different continent this season (with the exception of one W Series race in Austin two years ago), but she’s also driving in a heavier car that requires more physicality and power to race in. The move to Indy NXT also means she is learning to race on ovals, as well, which demands a different strategy than road racing. The 2023 season kicked off in March, and though there was quite a learning curve as she adjusted to the new series, Chadwick has now notched four top-10 finishes in a row. The first came at the start of July, which she followed up with another at Iowa Speedway (her first oval race) three weeks later, before sailing into August with a climb from P17 to eight at the Music City Grand Prix. Most recently, she finished 10th at the By Firestone Grand Prix in Indianapolis.
“It’s kind of where I would have hoped to be at the beginning of the year, to be honest. The first few races were a little bit of a baptism,” Chadwick says. “One thing that’s really tough about motorsport is we don’t get to drive cars every day. … So to physically adapt, it can take a little bit of time.”
As Chadwick has learned to get on top of the heavier, more powerful vehicle, her team at Andretti has helped by making adaptations to the car. In Formula One, the car is built custom for each driver. But in a lot of feeder series like Indy NXT, the cars are uniform, meaning that they’re designed with the average male driver in mind—the steering wheel size is based on a bigger hand size, the distance to the pedals is farther, etc. It’s been huge, Chadwick says, that Andretti is willing to push the boundaries as to what they can do with the car to help make it more comfortable for her to drive. So much so, she adds, that some of the men driving have asked to mirror the changes as well.
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Chadwick is part of a two-year program, so it’s likely she will return to Indy NXT for a second season in 2024. Part of why she came over in the first place is just pure opportunity, she says: After she tested with the Andretti team, and DHL was added as a partner, the chance to represent them both was something she couldn’t turn down. The other reason was the draw of competing in the United States, and through an IndyCar sanctioned competition, in particular.
“The reception that [the W Series] got over in America was huge. It felt like a huge amount of opportunity there, and there was a huge interest for women in the sport. And I think that does stem from the fact that there have been a few notable female racing drivers [who] have had a huge amount of success over there,” Chadwick says. “Danica Patrick, Pippa Mann, a few of them have got to the top level. So I think in that sense, it’s quite nice that you’ve seen that there’s a clear pathway for women to progress within the IndyCar ladder.”
Some people questioned why Chadwick made the move to Indy NXT (instead of going to perhaps a more direct feeder series like Formula Three), especially after she became such a well-known model for women in racing across Europe. At 25 years old, she has more than 115,000 followers on Twitter (recently rebranded as X), nearly 300,000 followers on Instagram and over 160,000 likes on TikTok. And because of her considerable success in the W Series—“really pivotal for me, if not the biggest platform I’ve ever had,” she says—expectations are high. And with that comes even higher critique. As Chadwick paves her own pathway through racing, she welcomes that pressure, but if the past year has taught her anything, it’s to focus on her own headspace instead: Am I happy with how things are going? Am I performing to the best of my ability?
Dialing back on social media is one change she’s made to enact this, but beyond that, Chadwick reminds herself of all the good that comes with these expectations. The positives (having great opportunities through commercial partners) outweigh the negatives (the few negative social media comments, she says).
The chance to contribute to the growing number of women in the sport is of course part of it, too. There’s a lot left to be done—Chadwick admits she’s glad she’s not in charge of finding the answer—but at the very least, fans across the sport acknowledge she is doing her part as someone to look up to, a role model that is bound to drive up numbers the same way Patrick or Mann has.
“The straight answer is that it’s a numbers game. We’re lacking, just generally, the numbers of women participating in the sport versus men,” she says. “So naturally, when you see Formula One, for example, 20 spots on the grid, it’s not surprising that there aren’t any women at this stage.”
But for now, when the 25 Indy NXT drivers line up on the track, three-time W Series champion Jamie Chadwick is there. And as for getting to the podium, well, this year is finally starting to click.
